Talk:Encounter Zone/@comment-28851694-20200213102508
Primary Creatures: "A random number is picked between 1 and 4 (or 1 and 6 in the Unofficial Patch 1.50), and the budget is divided with this number. ... The primary guardian will be the creature with the highest cost that is still below this value. ... If the Encounter Zone is not empty, the game will add as many of the primary creature as will fit into the undivided budget. However, no more than 8 units are ever added (6 in the Unofficial Patch 1.50), and if there is more than a single unit, there is a 50% chance that their number is actually reduced by one." While I welcome the change in v1.50 that 6 primary creatures are added at maximum, I wonder why the maximum divisor was changed to 6. I think those 2 changes contradict each other. Let's say you divide the budget by 6. Then you can always afford at least 6 monsters of the primary type. It's possible that you can afford 12 or more monsters (devided budget is twice as high as the chosen cheaper monster) but just buy 5 instead. In this case, you end up with a huge still-unused budget. Let's say you buy 5 primary monsters, although you could have afforded 12. Then, it's possible that you get 4 as the secondary monster divisor. In this case, it's likely that you will not be able to spend the whole monster budget (for example it's possible that the algorithm has to chose a monster that is cheaper than the primary creature although the divided budget is bigger this time). And if the divisor is 1, then the secondary type will be much stronger than the primary type. In my opinion this case should be avoided because the scouts will just report the primary type. Example: Let's say you have a lair with life monsters and the ininitial budget is 3000. We play v1.50 and the primary monster divisor is 6. 3200 / 6 is roughly 533 - a little short of the costs of Angels. So Unicorns will be the primary monster type with a cost of 250. We could afford 12 Unicorns but we will never buy more than 6. Let's say we will put one back (50 % chance) and will end up buying 5 Unicorns. So, now 1950 budget points are left for the secondary creature (3200 - 5 x 250 = 1950). That's about 61 % of the original budget. The secondary monster divisor is 4 at maximum because we bought 5 primary monsters. Let's say we roll 4. 1950 / 4 is roughly 487, again a little short of the costs of Angels. So Guardian Angels will be the secondary monster type with a cost of 75 (note that Unicorns can't be chosen because they are already the primary type). We will end up buying 4 Guardian Spirits, leaving 1650 budget points unused (1950 - 4 x 75 = 1650). An if we roll 1 or 2 as secondary monster divisor, then we will end up buying 2 Arch Angels (1950 - 2 x 950 = 50)! This means that the secondary guardians are much stronger than the primary guardians - the scouts will be doing a very bad job ("Scouts have spotted many Unicorns in the Fallen Temple"). Note that the case "Unicorns = primary, Arch Angels = secondary" can't happen at all in v1.31: If you want to have 1 Arch Angel as secondary monsters, then you will have to buy at least 7 Unicorns beforehand. So you will need a budget of at least 2700 points and if you devide that by 4, then you can still afford Angels as primary monsters. To make it short: I think 4 should have stayed the maximum primary monster divisor but I welcome the change that the maximum amount of primary monsters was reduced to 6 (because always getting 8 primary + 1 secondary or 7 primary + 2 secondary is lame). I also don't think that a primary monster divisor of 5 or 6 adds to the variety of monster combinations (type and amount) - it just increases the likelihood that the secondary monsters are swapped with the primary monsters (both in type and amount).